In Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business, Marcus Buckingham argues that love—not engagement, satisfaction, or motivation—is the only feeling that reliably changes the behavior of employees and customers, and that it can be deliberately designed into business.

Buckingham is one of the world’s foremost researchers on human performance. He is a former senior vice president at Gallup turned New York Times–best-selling author, having written First, Break All the Rules. In his new book, he draws on decades of research to show that the relationship between experiences and outcomes is not linear—only experiences so positive that people describe them as “love” actually drive loyalty, productivity, and advocacy.

In his conversation with Adam Job, senior director at the BCG Henderson Institute, he discusses why love is categorically different from engagement, the five feelings that make up a loving experience, three disciplines leaders can use to design love into their organizations, and why common practices like outsourcing and large spans of control are fundamentally unloving.

Key topics discussed:

01:16 | Why love is categorically different from engagement or satisfaction

04:43 | The nonlinear relationship between experiences and outcomes

08:24 | How experiences drive behaviors that drive outcomes

12:34 | Designing love in: the five feelings and three disciplines

16:00 | Can love be designed into products, not just experiences?

19:13 | The three disciplines: walk the stage, equip the people, sequence the scenes

27:39 | Spans of control and the one-to-12 rule

30:17 | The limits of artificial experience–making

Additional inspirations from Marcus Buckingham:

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently (Gallup Press, 2016)

Design Love In, with Marcus Buckingham

Thinkers & Ideas